Rails - Boolean field not saved on PostgreSQL / Heroku

Question

Got a strange problem:

Boolean field not getting saved on Heroku (works fine locally)

Details:

  Rails 2.3 on Heroku (bamboo-ree-1.8.7).

Migration

  def self.up
   add_column :users, :send_contact_emails, :boolean, :default => false
  end

On Heroku:

>> u = User.last
=> #<User id: 100, ......
>> u.send_contact_emails = true
=> true
>> u.save
=> true

>> x = User.last
=> #<User id: 100, ...
>> x.send_contact_emails
=> nil  <---------------------------- Why is this ?

When I do this locally (Postgresql 8.4), it works as expected.

Any ideas ?

EDIT:

Ran some tests directly on the DB:

>> ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("SELECT send_contact_emails from users where id = 100")[0]
=> {"send_contact_emails"=>nil}

>> ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("UPDATE users SET send_contact_emails=FALSE where id=100")
=> #<PGresult:0x7f76d7593580>

>> ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("SELECT send_contact_emails from users where id = 100")[0]
=> {"send_contact_emails"=>"f"}

So the problem is with Rails and not Postgresql...

not very helpful, but looks like a duplicate of stackoverflow.com/questions/7437789/… — chrispanda
– chrispanda, Commented Oct 17, 2011 at 10:43
Sadly the magic solution suggested in that question (rollback/re-migrate) did not work. — Boris
– Boris, Commented Oct 17, 2011 at 10:54
sorry to hear that - it did seem a long shot, but I thought maybe worth mentioning anyway — chrispanda
– chrispanda, Commented Oct 17, 2011 at 12:02

onedanshow · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-11 06:51:48Z

12

Make sure that you restart your app.

http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/rake

Once you run migrations that add new columns, you have to manually restart your app on heroku with "heroku restart" so that Rails will pick up the changes.

answered Jan 11, 2012 at 6:51

onedanshow

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1 Comment

Nick Over a year ago

I was having an issue where boolean fields generated by simple_form were showing up as text fields on Heroku. This answer fixed that problem. Thanks!

Boris · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-17 12:12:48Z

2

Looks like the problem was on the RAILS side.

Once I manually updated the values to false:

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("UPDATE users SET send_contact_emails=FALSE")

The problem disappeared.

(As if rails 2.3.10 was unable to handle 'nil' in boolean fields..)

answered Oct 17, 2011 at 12:12

Boris

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1 Comment

Harry Torry Over a year ago

In all fairness, I believe that nil should not be treated as true or false, as it is neither of them. It's a very general word Nil is a word commonly used to mean nothing or zero; it is one of several names for the number 0. - Does it mean it has no value or does it mean it should be false. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nil)

Anatoly · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-17 12:15:36Z

-1

Boolean in Rails uses tinyint column type, so it's 1/0 on DB level side.

API

Class
ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::MysqlAdapter < AbstractAdapter

emulate_booleans

By default, the MysqlAdapter will consider all columns of type tinyint(1) as boolean. If you wish to disable this emulation (which was the default behavior in versions 0.13.1 and earlier) you can add the following line to your environment.rb file:

  ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::MysqlAdapter.emulate_booleans = false

edited Oct 17, 2011 at 12:15

answered Oct 17, 2011 at 12:05

Anatoly

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